54 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society Vol. XVI 



SYSTEMATIC NOTES ON HEMIPTERA HETEROPTERA. 



By J. R. Malloch, Urbana, Ills. 



Some months ago I had occasion to examine carefully for com- 

 parative purposes certain structures in different orders of insects, 

 and in the course of my work I found some features which have 

 to my mind not received the recognition they are entitled to at the 

 hands of systematic entomologists. 



In classifying the Pentatomoidea, and especially the Cydnidse, 



1 found the arrangement of the spiracle and the two sensory 

 punctures caudad of or adjacent to it of considerable importance, 

 and have embodied my data in a paper already published. In 

 making a more extended survey of the Heteroptera I was struck 

 by the fact that the number and arrangement of the sensory 

 punctures, each of which usually bears a long hair, differs in 

 those families I have examined from that in Pentatomoidea and 

 usually the subfamilies may be distinguished by means of the 

 arrangement of the punctures. In Pentatomoidea there are, so 

 far as I have seen, two punctures behind or adjacent to each 

 spiracle, but in Coreidae and Pyrrhocoridse, the two families I 

 have given most attention to, there are 3 punctures on sternites 



2 to 5 and 2 on the sixth. In all cases in these two families the 

 punctures on second and third segments are far removed from 

 the spiracle, being much nearer to the ventro-median line than to 

 the lateral margin. On the subfamily Alydinse the arrangement 

 of the punctures is almost the same in Protenor, Darmistus, Es- 

 peransa and Leptocorisa, and different from that in Hyalymenus, 

 Megalotomus, Alydus and Stachyocnemus. Taking into con- 

 sideration all the characters of the groups I consider that Lepto- 

 corisa tipuloides De Geer should be included in the tribe Micre- 

 lytrini along with Protenor and its allies, but whether the other 

 species now linked with it in Leptocorisini should also be placed 

 there I do not presume to say. The principal distinction between 

 the tribes in so far as the arrangement of the sensory punctures 

 is concerned lies in the position of those on the fourth sternite. 

 In Micrelytrini the anterior two are close together, placed trans- 

 versely, and considerably in front of third, though all are well 

 distad of middle of sternite. In Alydini the punctures above re- 



